


Gods Out of Place

by for_t2



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Artificial Intelligence, Bad Code, Bad Flirting, Computers, F/F, False Pretenses, Harold Finch is in Danger, Influenced by Akira, Lost Objects, Mild Blood, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 09:40:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29044011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/for_t2/pseuds/for_t2
Summary: Shaw didn't usually take jobs without knowing all the details up front, but she was technically dead, the City was a wreck, and she needed the money
Relationships: Root | Samantha Groves/Sameen Shaw
Comments: 6
Kudos: 24





	Gods Out of Place

**Author's Note:**

> Original prompt: "Three random words - displace, texture, absence"

The light flickered above the doorway, as all lights did these days. And like so many other lights in the City, it barely cast a shadow, the grime that made up the streets and the stains on the walls doing a good enough job on their own.

And as far as Sameen Shaw, private… well, private whatever you needed her to be (mostly violent), was concerned, that suited her just fine. Some people liked to work in the shadows, and stealth did have its uses, but she was who you called when you need a job done and you needed done efficiently.

Or, at least, in this case, approached her in a bar with an offer of a job. An anonymous offer. An offer that didn’t really contain much in the way of details, just a place and a time. Shaw didn’t like it. But ever since she had been kicked out of medical school, ever since her partner in the City’s security forces decided to poke around something classified, well, technically, Shaw was dead. And being dead has a way of making business complicated.

And it was a very well-paying offer.

People did what people had to do these days. Even if they didn’t like it.

And what Shaw definitely didn’t like was how empty the room was. It was the right room at the right time, and there was nobody there. Nobody had reacted as the half-broken door creaked when she pushed it open and nobody had moved in the minute she was waited in the middle of the stacks and stacks of what must’ve been old computer parts, piled high and higher on top of each other in every corner and on every table.

Shaw had never seen as many computers before, not even when she served in the City’s forces. She wouldn’t even have guessed that this many computers still existed, let alone all existed in the same small basement room.

It was too still. Something about the air smelled… Shaw recognised that smell from somewhere. It wasn’t plastic, not like the computers, it was metallic, like-- 

“You know,” Shaw spun as the voice appeared behind her. “I definitely think I hired the right person.”

Shaw glared at the stranger, a tall, lanky woman whose eyes were wandering a little too much. “Who the hell are you?”

“You can call me Root.” The name seemed familiar. “And I am spending a lot of money so that you can find something that I appear to have misplaced.”

Shaw didn’t like how cheerful she sounded either. “What do you need me to find?”

“A hard drive.” Root flopped down into the lone chair in the place. Grabbed a magazine, some faded copy of some decades old coding weekly. Gestured vaguely at the stacks. “It’s in there somewhere. Have fun.”

In there somewhere. “Hold on.” Shaw knew there was a reason why she wasn’t liking this. She could do a lot of things, but when she said she could help clean up other people’s messes, she didn’t mean it quite this literally. “I think you have the wrong person.”

“Oh no, Sameen.” Root popped her head back up from the pages. “I have exactly the right person.”

“Look,” Shaw chuckled. “I don’t know what you’ve heard about me, but—”

“I don’t make mistakes, Shaw.” Root’s voice never went cold, and that somehow made it more chilling. “And I’ve read your files. There are a lot of people who would love to hear that you’re still alive.”

Shit.

“It’s just a hard drive.” Root gave her a pitying stare. “Think of it as an easy job. With a very appreciative audience.” And a terrible attempt at a wink.

At least Shaw was getting paid. “What does a hard drive even look like?”

*****

Not being able to find the stupid hard drive was one thing, having to search for it while listening to Root was an entirely different level of things. As it turned out.

“…but the problem with that is that it causes the most absurd overflow issues! It’s like…” Root finally paused for a second to consider. “Well, of course, this is all hypothetical, it’s hard to get a lot of practice on real computers, but you know, I think it make sense.”

“Sure, Root.” Shaw muttered as she hauled yet another box of parts down from a shelf that was taller than her. “If you say so.”

“Why, is that scepticism I hear in your lovely voice?”

“No.” Shaw would never do scepticism. Or sarcasm. Never. “I’m sure a nerd like you knows everything there is to know about computers.”

But, of course, Root would choose to completely ignore sarcasm. “You flatter me, Sameen.”

“Look.” Shaw tried slamming the box down on the table, but that just made something inside it making a crashing noise that probably wasn’t supposed to happen. “How quickly do you want me to find this thing?”

“Quickly?” Root’s face evolved into the biggest shit-eating grin Shaw had ever seen. “I don’t think anything we’d do together would be quick.”

Shaw could hardly be blamed for groaning out loud.

*****

The third time a pile of computers toppled over and onto her, Shaw just kinda gave up for a moment. Just lay there on the shop floor, piles of scattered bits all around her.

“Root?” After a few minutes, she broke the silence. “I don’t think your hard drive is in here.”

“Oh, no.” Root didn’t bother to look up from the half-torn magazine she was on now. “It is.”

Shaw lifted up what used to be a keyboard above her head. Grimaced at the multicoloured stains crisscrossing it. “Are you sure?”

“Very.” She sounded as certain as a true believer. “It’s here. It has to be here.”

“Hm.” Shaw grimaced again as she ran her finger back over one of the splotches on the keyboard. She thought she recognised the colour. Maybe. It was hard to tell in this light. “What’s so special about this hard drive, anyways?”

“It’s from the time of the Old Gods.” Shaw didn’t have time to ask what she meant by gods before she continued. “Well, obviously, all computers are. But this one came from them directly. I think it has information about what happened. About the Final War.”

Shaw’s spider senses were tingling (not that she knew anyone who had ever actually seen a spider – it was an old saying). “And why do you need to know that?”

“I’m an amateur historian.” Somehow, Root managed to make sincerity sound insincere. “It’s a very underappreciated art.”

“I’ve never heard of an amateur historian talk about Old Gods before.” Shaw hadn’t heard anyone talk like that.

“The A.I.s, Sameen.” And Root definitely managed to make patronising sound doubly condescending. “The artificial intelligences that ruled the world, the computers that went to war, the ones that disappeared, that left us in this mess of a city.”

Hopefully Shaw hadn’t managed to get herself caught up in a cult. Hopefully. In her experience, that never ended well. “You sound angry.”

Root chuckled. “Aren’t you?”

*****

The sound of the chair squeaking as Root jumped up when Shaw tossed the hard drive right into her lap was one of the most satisfying sounds Shaw had ever heard. “Found it.”

Unfortunately, it didn’t manage to provoke a reaction out of Root. She just smiled at Shaw before lifting the hard drive to the light, turning it around in her hands almost reverentially. “Thank you.” And for once, she even sounded genuine. “Where was it?”

It was behind a loose stone in the wall, a stone that seemed a little too hastily jammed in, if the cracks on the edges were anything to go by. Shaw wasn’t sure she wanted to stick around and see if there was a reason for that. “Thanks for the money. Bye.”

Shaw ignored Root’s chuckle behind her as she marched back towards the door. As she grabbed her jacket and… And as she noticed that smell again. That familiar colour in the stains on the door frame. She slowed for a second to run her thumb across it. To think. To recognise the texture.

It was blood.

Fresh blood.

Root’s gun clicked behind her. “I didn’t say you could leave just yet, Sameen.”

With her back turned to Root and one hand still on the doorframe, Shaw didn’t like her odds of reaching her gun first. Or her odds of running. Not yet. “You killed somebody here, didn’t you?”

“People like to say I’m out of my mind, but poor old Arthur…” Root shrugged. “He knew what he was trying to hide. The world won’t miss another line of bad code.”

“Let me guess.” Shaw was pretty sure Root wasn’t an amateur historian. And the sound of that gun clicking, if Shaw’s training was anything to go by, meant an expensive gun, on the smaller side, easier to hide but with limited ammunition. “That hard drive isn’t just information about the robots.”

“The gods weren’t robots, Sameen.” Root tsked. Shaw knew she had guessed right. “They were perfect.”

This was… not good. But Shaw just needed to push a little further. “They almost destroyed the world, Root. You sure bringing them back’s a good idea?”

“Bad code deserves to be deleted.” Shaw braced as Root came up close to her. “Now, there was a man who saved you from the City’s forces. A man in a suit who helped you die. I need you to call him for me.”

“Oh, come on Root.” Shaw smirked. “Using me to get a guy’s number? I thought we had something together.”

Something that caught Root just off guard enough to give Shaw an opening.

In the time it took her to realise she had lowered her gun by a tiny fraction, Shaw shoved her away. Drew her own gun.

Shaw just managed to fire off a couple of shots before Root fired back. Before Shaw had to dive for cover behind one of the stacks of computer parts.

Shaw double-checked her ammo. Circled round from one stack to another. Waited for Root’s gun to click empty.

Pounced.

But her bullets met thin air.

“Fuck.” Root was gone. And there wasn’t any trail of blood. “Fuck!” Shaw swore to herself again. The hard drive was gone too. This was bad. Very bad.

She needed to find him. Before Root did. Before the A.Is. came back. Before…

She needed to find Finch.


End file.
